What do you, BRITISH people think about the American sororities/fraternities?

What's with all the NON-BRITISH people answering on this topic - Americans, Canadians, Australians? Is there no reading comprehension here?

Oops! I did it too!

I'm British but to be honest I am largely indifferent to sororities/fraternaties. Each to their own I say...

I don't think there's anything like it in UK universities, people join political/social/religious groups according to their tastes.

The Australian tertiary system is very similar to the British in many ways.

As r/l institutions, quite ridiculous. As pretexts for stories about pretty girls getting paddled on their bare bottoms, great!

I couldn't agree more, Phil. Then a lot of real life membership type institutions are ridiculous.

Another strange institution from the USA collegiate world is the honor society. They seem to exist primarily to extract money from the "honorees". Do these organizations exist worldwide?

An "honor" that costs you money isn't really much of an honor at all.

Something similar occurs with so called "Old Boys" clubs, in the UK private sector. To join one after leaving school usually means you are tapped for money or are given the task of tapping other former pupils.

Checking the internet for info about sororities yields about 75% porn, 10% horror stories of hazing gone wrong, 10% adverts for anything that can have greek letters put on it, and 5% that may be actual information, mostly telling would-be pledges to ignore the other 95%. Thus even basic info about sororities is difficult to come by in Britain. What are sororities for? What do their members actually do? Why are girls so anxious to join - are there privileges or opportunities denied non-sorority girls? If they are just social clubs, why all the rules and initiation rituals? Why Greek letters - are modern college girls even taught Greek? It's all a mystery to me...

(This applies to fraternities too)They are mostly communal room and board arrangements so that groups of students live together under a common roof. The local chapter actually owns the sorority house which is usually a large house with maybe 30 bedrooms or so.


Live at the sorority house. Hold social functions. Do things for the university. Help and mentor each other with studies. Compete in sports and other things.


It becomes a tightly knit group of friends that carries on past college. These are lasting relationships.


Many are thought to carry a certain prestige, both on campus and nationally. The initiation rituals and secret stuff come from an earlier era when such things were in vogue and are no different in concept from other secret societies like the Freemasons, Elks, Shriners, etc. there is a certain cachet of exclusivity that comes from knowing the secret handshake and stuff.